The Misadventures of Herlock Sholmes
by Professor Snaglefoompus
Summary: Who hasn't heard the tales of the great detective, Herlock Sholmes? His intelligence and shrewdness are famous, and some go so far as to say he is the greatest crime-fighter in all of London! These stories are all lies. The truth is that Herlock Sholmes is the biggest fool it has ever been my misfortune to meet.
1. Foreword

**Foreword**

My name is Doctor John Wilson. Recently, I have received a flood of requests to write about my former roommate, Herlock Sholmes. Doubtlessly, you recognize his name. Who hasn't heard the tales of the great detective, Herlock Sholmes? His intelligence and shrewdness are famous, and some go so far as to say he is the greatest crime-fighter in all of London!

These stories are all lies.

The truth is that Herlock Sholmes is the biggest fool it has ever been my misfortune to meet. Yes, the two of us have solved some mysteries together, but most of them were solved by sheer luck. The rest of the cases were not solved by Sholmes; they were solved by me.

I cannot live a lie anymore. In this volume, I intend to set the record straight and reveal the truth behind the career of London's most famous detective.


	2. A Scandal in Bohemia I

**A Scandal in Bohemia.  
I.**

My dear friend, Herlock Sholmes, believes himself to be quite accomplished in the field of romance. This belief is nothing but a gross fiction. The truth is that Sholmes' great incompetence prevents him from finding a female companion for any period of time longer than five minutes.

And yet there is one woman, one woman in particular who Sholmes greatly admires. Indeed, instead of calling her a woman, he always refers to her as _the_ woman. I imagine that he would like nothing better than to marry her after a passionate romance, then spend the rest of their lives living happily in Bohemia.

This is, of course, impossible. She is already married, and the two of them have been permanently banned from the country of Bohemia. There is also the not insignificant fact that she hates Sholmes with a passion, but the heart wants what it wants, and despite these great difficulties, Herlock Sholmes wants to marry the woman.

Ah, but I am getting ahead of myself. Let me start the story at the beginning.

I do not wish to brag, but I know a good deal about love and romance, having been married three times. Sholmes first met his woman shortly after my second marriage. I had seen little of Sholmes lately, and I picked that evening to pay him a visit. I feel it is my duty to look out for him every now and then, and to ensure that he has not found his way inside a jail or an asylum.

Sholmes was pacing his room at Baked Street, as I arrived. He waved me towards a chair, then looked me over with a critical eye. I sighed inwardly at this. Of _course_ he was going to take the opportunity to make one of his famous "deductions".

"So, Wilson!" he said at last. "I see that you have gone back into the medical practice!"

He then beamed at me, as if he had made the discovery of a century, when the truth is that even a mere child could tell you a doctor is, indeed, a doctor. Playing along with him, I asked, "I have, but how did you know that?"

"Graduate school, my dear Wilson! The scent of iodoform, and the black mark of nitrate of silver upon your right forefinger confirms that you have resumed your work!"

"Yes, only a brilliant detective could have deduced that I am doing medical work," I said calmly. At this point I removed the stethoscope from around my neck and placed it inside the medicine bag I was holding in my left hand.

"I also deduce that you have gotten yourself very wet recently, and you have a clumsy servant girl."

"And what gives you that impression?"

"It is the leather, on the inside of your left shoe! It is scored by six parallel cuts! Obviously, they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey."

I looked down at my shoes. I appeared that Sholmes had mistaken some shadows for cuts, but I did not bother to tell him that my shoes were perfectly fine. I also failed to mention that my shoes were not made of leather, and that it was impossible for me to have stepped into mud recently, as it had not rained in London at all during the past two weeks.

"It appears that I am not the only person here who has resumed his work," said I. "I can tell from your distracted manner that you are busy working on a case."

"Quite right!" Herlock said. He reached into his pocket and threw over a sheet of thick, pink-tinted notepaper. "Here is the case! Read it!"

The note was undated, and without either signature or address.

"At a quarter to eight o'clock tonight, there will call upon you a gentleman who desires to consult you upon a matter of the very deepest importance. Your recent services to one of the royal houses of Europe have shown that you are one who may be safely trusted with weighty matters such as the one that I have found myself in. Be in your chambers at that hour, and do not take it amiss if your visitor wears a mask."

"It sounds important," I remarked. "A masked visitor?"

"It is most peculiar, Wilson. I _do_ wish I knew what my visitor was talking about."

"Have you tried looking at the paper itself for clues?" I suggested.

"Alas! There is nothing to be found on the paper at all!"

"Not quite," I said, holding the paper up to the light. "Look. It clearly is stamped with the words 'Eg Papier Gt'."

"Aha!" Sholmes said. "That must be the name of the person who wrote the note!"

"Er...no," I said. "Gt must be short for Gesellschaft, which is German for 'company'. Meaning that this paper was made by the Eg Papier Company."

"I see it! I see it!" Sholmes said. "You mean to say whoever wrote this letter must be German, because he doesn't know how to spell the word 'paper' correctly!"

I groaned. Instead of informing Sholmes that "papier" is German for paper, I checked the clock. By good fortune, it was not long before the visitor was scheduled to arrive. I settled myself down and talked with Sholmes for a bit, until we heard the sound of horses' hooves and grating wheels against the curb, followed by a sharp pull at the bell.

A slow and heavy step, which had been heard upon the stairs and in the passage, paused immediately outside the door. Then there was a loud and authoritative tap.

"Come in!" said Sholmes.

A man entered who could hardly have been less than six feet six inches in height, with the chest and limbs of a Hercules. His dress was rich with a richness which would be looked upon as akin to bad taste; heavy bands of astrakhan were slashed across the sleeves and fronts of his double-breasted coat, while the deep blue cloak which was thrown over his shoulders was lined with flame-colored silk and secured at the neck with a brooch which consisted of a single flaming beryl.

However, the visitor's mode of dress was not what immediately captured one's attention. Rather, I found myself focusing on the man's black vizard mask, which completely covered the upper part of his face and extended down past the cheekbones. From the lower part of the face, he appeared to be a man of strong character, with a thick, hanging mustache and a long, straight chin suggestive of resolution pushed to the length of obstinacy.

"You had my note?" he asked with a deep harsh voice and a strongly marked German accent. "I told you that I would call." He looked from one to the other of us, as if uncertain which to address.

"Pray take a seat," said Holmes. "This is my friend and colleague, Dr. Wilson, who is occasionally good enough to help me in my cases. Whom have I the honor to address?"

"You may address me as the Count Von Kramm, a Bohemian nobleman. If you do not mind, Mr. Sholmes, I should much prefer to communicate with you alone."

I rose to go, but Sholmes caught me by the wrist and pushed me back into my chair. "It is both, or none," said he. "You may say before this gentleman anything which you may say to me."

The Count shrugged his broad shoulders. "Then I must begin," said he, "by binding you both to absolute secrecy for two years. This matter is of such weight that it may have an influence upon European history."

"I promise," said Sholmes.

"And I."

"The circumstances are of great delicacy, and every precaution has to be taken to quench what might grow to be an immense scandal. To speak plainly, I have come representing the great House of Ormstein, hereditary kings of Bohemia."

I was duly impressed to learn that our visitor was the representative of royalty.

"The facts are briefly these: Some five years ago, during a lengthy visit to Warsaw, the King of Bohemia wrote a number of compromising letters to the well-known adventuress, Irene Adler. The name is no doubt familiar to you."

"Bohemia..." Sholmes said. "That is impossible, my good man. We were under the impression that our visitor speaks German."

I was about to explain that German was spoken in Bohemia, when Sholmes jumped forward and attacked our visitor. "This means you are an impostor! You are most likely Miss Adler herself, disguised by a mask!"

Our visitor struggled, as Sholmes attempted to rip off his mustache. I was able to grab Sholmes and pull him backwards, but not before our visitor had fallen to the ground, his mask beside him.

To my great surprise, our visitor was not disturbed by these events. Rather, he stood up proudly. "You are right," he cried. "I am not Count Von Kramm! I am the King of Bohemia! Why should I attempt to conceal it?"

"I knew he was an impostor," Sholmes said smugly.

Sometimes, my friend's good luck manages to astonish me.

"I can see that your powers of deduction and observation are indeed excellent!" said the king, impressed. "And that is why I have come incognito from Prague, for the purpose of consulting you. You see, Irene Adler is here in London, and I am certain that she still has those letters. I need you to get them back."

"I see," Sholmes said, leaning forward with interest. "What sort of scandalous letters are these? Did the two of you have a secret marriage?"

"No, thank God!"

"So Miss Adler is single, then?" Sholmes said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "That is good to know."

"Yes, but how is that relevant?"

I forced a laugh. "My companion is merely joking, Your Highness!" I said. "But he has a point. If Miss Adler is going to use these letters for blackmail or some other nefarious purpose, how is she to prove their authenticity?"

"They have my handwriting."

"Pooh, pooh! Forgery."

"My private note-paper."

"Stolen."

"My own seal."

"Imitated."

"My photograph."

"Bought."

"We were both in the photograph."

Sholmes' hair was wild, as held out his hands in front of him. "Aliens," said he. "Aliens made the photograph."

The Bohemian King looked at Sholmes as if he had lost his mind. I attempted to bring the discussion back into the realm of normality. "If I may ask, what does she intend to do with these letters?"

"You may have heard that I am about to be married to Clotilde Lothman von Saxe-Meningen, second daughter of the King of Scandinavia. Miss Adler has threatened to send the photograph to my fiancée's family, utterly ruining me."

"You are sure that she has not sent it yet?"

"I am sure."

"And why?"

"Because she has said that she would send it on the day when the betrothal was publicly proclaimed. That will be next Monday."

"Then we have three days to recover that photograph," Sholmes said. "That is more than enough time for us! Come back here in two days, King, and we'll have it for you."

"Thank you! Thank you, Mr. Sholmes!" the King of Bohemia said. "I leave these matters in your capable hands."

"One last thing before you leave," I said. "Was the photograph a cabinet?"

"It was."

"Ah, then it will be easy to find!" said Sholmes. "Photographs are small, but cabinets are much larger!"

"No, Sholmes, a cabinet photograph is a type of photograph," I said. "It refers to the border around the...never mind."

Once the King of Bohemia had left, Herlock Sholmes immediately went into one of his great thinking fits. Perhaps you have heard of these in the stories about him; they say he sits in his armchair for five minutes, while he thinks about a mystery from all possible angles. Having lived with Sholmes for several years, I can confidently affirm that he does _not_ spend the entire time contemplating mysteries. The only thing which could fully occupy his mind for so long is the question of what he will have for breakfast the next morning.

"Wilson, I have a plan to get the photograph," said he at last. "Meet me back here tomorrow afternoon at three o'clock, with a bulldog, a wedding dress, and a pound of sauerkraut."

"Or I could arrive here tomorrow in the morning, and we could go to Miss Adler's house together," I suggested.

"Hmmm...perhaps you're right. The wedding dress wouldn't have looked that good on you, anyway."


	3. A Scandal in Bohemia II

**A Scandal in Bohemia.  
II.**

The next morning, Sholmes and I rode to Miss Adler's residence in a carriage. Sholmes was silent for most of the ride, until he removed his mangy hat and looked at me directly. "Wilson, I am glad you are here. It's been lonely for me, ever since you moved out of our apartments."

"I apologize for not visiting sooner. Married life—

"I understand. You have kept yourself occupied with the married life," Sholmes said, stroking his chin. "Which is why I have decided to get married myself!"

"What?"

"There are only two mysteries in the world that I have not solved: women, and the proper method of putting on a tie," said Sholmes. "If I get married, I shall solve both mysteries at once."

Naturally, I found this proposal to be utterly ridiculous. "I...I certainly desire your happiness, but I feel compelled to say that you may be acting too hastily. Do you even know any unwed women around your age?"

"Irene Adler, of course!"

"Irene—do you mean the woman we have been hired to rob?"

"The very same! She must be a great beauty, if Count von Bohemian King liked her," Sholmes said. He sighed happily. "She'll start as an international supercriminal, and she'll end as Mrs. Herlock Sholmes."

And with that, I lost all hope of this being a simple case. Catching a criminal, even if it be a woman, is one thing. Falling in love with a criminal is another thing entirely.

I cast a critical eye over my friend. That day, he had tried to dress himself in a singular fashion, in order to impress his lady love. The results were less than desirable. He was drunken-looking, with ill-kempt hair, an inflamed face and disreputable clothes; in short, he resembled not an eligible bachelor, but an unemployed horseman.

The carriage came to a stop. "We're here!" my companion cried suddenly. "This is her house! And look, there she is! Oh, isn't she the loveliest thing you ever laid eyes on?"

Sholmes was pointing at an elderly woman, bent over a cane. She was so wrinkled that she resembled a dying elephant. He looked upon her with great admiration, while I double-checked the paper that the king had given us. "I believe you have the wrong address."

"Oh. Right."

Sholmes stumbled out of the carriage and landed face-first on the ground. The two of us walked along the street, towards Briony Lodge. It is a bijou villa, with a garden at the back, but built out in front right up to the road, two stories. There was a mews in a lane which runs down by one wall of the garden, which gave me a clever idea.

I sent Sholmes down the lane to speak with the horsemen. They instantly mistook him for one of their own and put him to work. There is a wonderful sympathy among horsemen, and soon they gave him all the information he could desire about Miss Adler, as well as a half dozen other people in the neighborhood.

"She will be the perfect wife," Sholmes told me. "She has turned all the men's heads down around here. They say she is the daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet! She lives quietly, sings at concerts, drives out at five every day, and returns at seven sharp for dinner. She seldom goes out at other times, except when she sings."

"I see. She hides behind a façade of delicate innocence, so no one would suspect her of blackmailing foreign heads of state."

"I am sure that is just a misunderstanding. My fiancée would never blackmail anyone."

I began to remind Sholmes that he had never seen the woman in question, when a hansom cab drove up to Briony Lodge, and a gentleman sprang out. He was a remarkably handsome man, dark, aquiline, and mustached. He appeared to be in a great hurry, shouted to the cabman to wait, and brushed past the maid who opened the door with the air of a man who was thoroughly at home.

"Who could that be?" I wondered aloud.

Sholmes clenched his fists. "That must be Mr. Godfrey Norton, of the Inner Temple. They told me that he is a lawyer who never calls less than once a day, and often twice. Clearly, I have a rival suitor."

I could catch glimpses of him in the windows of the sitting-room, pacing up and down, talking excitedly, and waving his arms. Of her I could see nothing. Presently he emerged, looking even more flurried than before. As he stepped up to the cab, he pulled a gold watch from his pocket and looked at it earnestly, "Drive like the devil," he shouted, "first to Gross & Hankey's in Regent Street, and then to the Church of St. Monica in the Edgeware Road. Half a guinea if you do it in twenty minutes!"

"Curious," I said. "It appears something is afoot."

"I didn't notice anything wrong with his foot," Sholmes said.

Away they went, and I was just wondering whether we should not do well to follow them when up the lane came a neat little landau, the coachman with his coat only half-buttoned, and his tie under his ear, while all the tags of his harness were sticking out of the buckles. It hadn't pulled up before she shot out of the hall door and into it. I only caught a glimpse of her at the moment, but she was a lovely woman, with a face that a man might die for.

"The Church of St. Monica, John," she cried, "and half a sovereign if you reach it in twenty minutes."

This was a most welcome scenario. Miss Adler voluntarily left her house, to a destination twenty minutes away. It was unlikely she would return without three-quarters of an hour, giving us plenty of time to search her house and locate the photograph, as well as the incriminating letters. I turned to Sholmes, only to find that he had vacated his post by my side. He was running down the street, chasing after the landau.

"Darling! Darling!" he shouted.

"Sholmes, you idiot!" I cried. "Come back here!"

Sholmes intercepted a cab and jumped in before I could object. "The Church of Paint Johnica, and half a sovereign if you reach it in twenty minutes!" said he, and off they went at a great speed.

I sighed, then checked my watch. It was twenty-five minutes to twelve, and I deduced that something was scheduled to occur at Saint Monica's at noon. With no further information at my disposal, I could not determine what would happen there.

I confess that I felt a little despondent at this turn of events. It completely ruined my original plan for recovering the photograph, which was to trick Miss Adler into thinking that the house was on fire. This is a trick I have used twice before, once in the Darlington Substitution Scandal and again in the Arnsworth Castle business. When a woman thinks that her house is on fire, her instinct is at once to rush to the thing which she values most. A married woman grabs at her baby; an unmarried one reaches for her jewel-box. Presumably, Miss Adler would lead us directly to the photograph we were in search of.

I took a deep breath and formulated a new plan. Posing as an impudent attorney, I knocked at the front door of the house and demanded to see Miss Adler immediately. The staff told me that she was not at home, but I forced my way into the sitting room and cemented myself on a sofa, adamantly declaring that I would not move from the spot until she returned. Since I was offensively rude and unpleasant, the staff gave me a wide berth, which is exactly what I wanted.

When I was reasonably sure of my privacy, I began to search the sitting-room. There are only so many places a person can hide a cabinet photograph, due to its size, and I was beginning to fear that it might be somewhere inside when I found it and the letters in a recess behind a sliding panel just above the right bell-pull.

I had just finished putting them in my bag, when a voice behind me asked, "Sir, what are you doing?"

I turned to see a coachman watching me narrowly. "What does it look like I'm doing?" I snapped. "I am using the bell-pull to summon your lazy presence! It is"— here I checked my watch—"nearly noon! If Miss Adler does not arrive within five minutes, I shall have to leave!"

"Perhaps it would be best if you did so," the coachman said, in an angry voice.

I made a small objection, but allowed myself to be persuaded to leave at once. I went but a short distance on foot, before hailing a cab and going directly to the temporary residence of the King of Bohemia. He was much grateful to me for the successful completion of my mission, and he immediately threw the offending articles in the fire.

"You will be well compensated for saving my life," said he. "But I must ask one thing. Where is Mr. Sholmes? I expected to see the great detective himself, not his assistant."

"The last I saw him, he was...distracting Miss Adler, so she could not interfere with the recovery of the photograph," I said. I had no doubt that, no matter what Miss Adler's plans at St. Monica's were, Sholmes would find a way to ruin them.

Little did I know that Sholmes was stirring up more trouble than I could have expected. Ten minutes later, my conversation with the King of Bohemia was interrupted by a great noise coming from outside. Looking out the window, I saw Sholmes shouting and waving his arms, in front of a large crowd.

"That's where the Bohemian King is staying!"

"A foreign king in London?"

"But why would he come here under an assumed name?"

I quickly turned to the king. "Your majesty, I fear your cover has been blown," I said. "How soon can you leave this building?"

It was madness, but security managed to safely escort the king from the mob of reporters, policemen and others who had gathered in hopes of seeing the foreign leader. By the time I arrived, Sholmes was visibly injured and cowering in fear, under an irate Irene Adler.

"You moron! You fool! You utterly horrid imbecile!"

"Mummy! I want my mummy!" Sholmes cried, tears flowing down his cheeks.

Due to the police presence, Miss Adler was restrained before she could damage Sholmes severely. I stepped in at this point and explained the situation to the nearest constable, who decided it would be best to release Sholmes and Miss Adler separately.

Sholmes and I returned to Half-Baked Street, where we exchanged our stories. He congratulated me most heartily on retrieving the items from Ader's residence, before describing the situation in Saint Monica's.

"I lounged up the side aisle like any idler who has dropped into a church. There was not a soul there, save Miss Adler, Mr. Norton and a surplice clergyman who was expostulating with them. They were all three standing in a knot in front of the altar, and you will not believe why!"

"Why?"

"Marriage! It was a secret marriage, if you can believe it! My arriving there was providential, as there was no other soul around, and there needed to be a witness to make the marriage legally binding."

I laughed. "Do you mean to say that the King of Bohemia was so worried about Miss Adler interfering in his marriage, when all along she was intending to marry another man in London?"

"Yes! Fate has a way of making fools of us all, it seems," Sholmes said. "Miss Adler's wedding went perfectly well, until the very end. You know, of course, that it is customary for a wedding ceremony to conclude with the groom kissing the bride."

"Of course."

"I tried to kiss dear Irene, but Mr. Norton wouldn't let me! Seems he had gotten the fool idea in his head that _he_ was the man she was marrying! An utterly ridiculous and stubborn man, he is!"

I sighed wearily, unsurprised that Sholmes could mistake another man's wedding for his own. "What did you do?"

"What could I do? I told about her affair with the King of Bohemia, in order to dissuade him. I may have gotten a few facts wrong somewhere, but it quickly brought an end of the false wedding."

I felt it best not to ask how he had gone from ruining a perfectly happy wedding, to leading an angry mob outside of the king's hotel. Either way, the case was successfully completed. The photographs in question had been destroyed and the King of Bohemia returned home, where he was happily married. I am told that Miss Adler and Mr. Norton left London, so they could be married in safety, as far away from Herlock Sholmes as possible.

Needless to say, this has not lowered his affection for her in the slightest. I can only hope that the next time he decides to chase after a woman, she is not a blackmailer.


End file.
